Upstaged again on a night when the Chelsea formation was redesigned to assist his integration into the team, Fernando Torres could only stand and admire the cool precision with which Nicolas Anelka gave the London club an early lead in Copenhagen, and then doubled it early in the second half.

After Anelka's dreadful miss from the penalty spot in the FA Cup on Saturday, and on a night when Chelsea needed it most, the Frenchman showed that he remains a deadly striker of a moving ball. How much would Torres have given in recent weeks for just a moment or two of such clarity?

Under pressure to salvage Chelsea's season, and facing a match that suddenly assumed a grave importance, Carlo Ancelotti redesigned the team to suit his new striker. In the wake of that morale-lowering Cup exit at the hands of struggling Everton, something had to be done to restore a sagging team's sense of identity and purpose, and it involved dropping Didier Drogba to the bench and pairing Torres and Anelka in front of a flat four-man midfield.

There were variations on offer, as Florent Malouda demonstrated in the opening phases when he popped up alongside the front two, or when Anelka dropped behind the midfield line to pick up the ball before 10 minutes had gone, without showing much idea what to do with it. Anelka is an intelligent footballer but his strength, as he was soon to remind us, is as a goalscorer whose most effective role in a side has not changed significantly since he emerged as a teenage prodigy with Arsenal.

Drogba had not appeared on the pitch to warm up with his fellow substitutes, but he was present and correct on the bench when the match began.

He may yet have an important part to play in Chelsea's season, but perhaps he will watch the match between Marseille and Manchester United wondering if he will start his next campaign back in the city of the Phoenicians.

Although unbeaten in Champions League matches at the Parken before Chelsea's visit, FC Copenhagen looked rusty rather than fresh after their winter break, and only occasionally in the first half were they able to exploit the obvious weakness in Chelsea's 4-4-2.

Every now and then, however, there were alarms at the heart of Ancelotti's midfield, where the inability of Frank Lampard or Michael Essien to do an efficient screening job aroused a suspicion that the central defence could be undermined.

For Torres, the match had started with a spark of promise. In the first minute Anelka slipped the ball through to meet the Spaniard's run in the inside-right channel, but Torres pushed the ball too wide and saw his shot from a tight angle smothered by the goalkeeper.

His colleagues' awareness of his plight and of his potential value to the side could be seen three minutes later, when Ramires got hold of the ball on the right. Instead of taking the logical option of feeding José Bosingwa's overlapping run on the right or slipping the ball inside to a supporting player, the Brazilian tried to find Torres on the other side of the penalty area with an optimistic pass that failed to find its way through a thicket of four defenders.

Torres lifted one clever pass over the Danish defence to Anelka midway through the half, reviving the hint of interplay shown in the opening minute. But two runs on goal of his own in the inside-left position lacked a deftness of touch, the ball ending in the goalkeeper's arms, while a good chance on the right was wasted when he took a nervous touch instead of a first-time shot.

Copenhagen started the second half with noticeably more energy, but within minutes Torres found himself in possession on the edge of the area and contemplating a shot. Again his anxiety betrayed itself as he dwelt on the ball in front of a group of defenders and saw his effort smothered almost before it had left his foot.

Two minutes later Anelka took advantage of Lampard's perfectly measured reverse pass, slipping through a flat defensive line to reproduce his earlier finish. Two up, Chelsea were able to relax as the brief puff of wind went from Copenhagen's sails. The remainder of the night started to look like a chance for Torres to take advantage of wounded opponents, but after the new recruit gained possession in a similar position before turning inside neatly enough and shifting the ball on to his left foot, he saw his low shot foiled by a sprawling save.

With 20 minutes to go Zdenek Pospech was shown a yellow card for bringing Torres down on the edge of the area, only for Lampard to blaze the free kick over the bar. A couple of minutes later, just after Drogba had replaced Anelka, Torres was sent through but saw his shot cleared off the line, and another invitation to make his mark had gone begging. There will not be many better opportunities than this largely one-sided contest.